Cool Hands Barack

Financial calamity has been averted, thanks to the policies of a president who stood calm while even some orthodox economists --including a prominent Nobel Prize winner-- werecalling for nationalization of banks and major industries, and the markets gyrated wildly.

[Black Star News Editorial]

Once in a while a president for that moment in history does materialize. Such is our moment today--with Barack Obama as president of the United States.

Just a few months ago, we were all talking about hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs being lost; that was the first conversation people had every morning. Major corporations were laying off employees and the Big Three auto companies were going under, wiping out manufacturing jobs and the interconnected services and supply chains.

Economic collapse is not the topic of conversations anymore. From 700,000-plus job losses, there have now been tens of thousands of job gains in the past few months.

Financial calamity has been averted, thanks to the policies of a president who stood calm while even some orthodox economists --including a prominent Nobel Prize winner-- were calling for nationalization of banks and major industries, and the markets were gyrating wildly.

If some of our colleagues in the white-shoe media were honest, they would give this president his just dues for pulling the economy back from the brink. He made a painful and unpopular decision to secure the major banks--thereby averting a 1930s style run on the banks.

Republican opportunists have for months been deriding the Obama Administration for elevating the deficit by pumping over $800 billion into the economy through the so-called Stimulus program. Yet, these hypocrites have also been begging the Administration to inject these monies into their own constituencies. How revolting.

It's a good thing that the president at some point realized that he could not govern based on what pollsters were saying. That was the only way he was able to get health care reform.

The current big fight is financial reform; the Wall Street bandits musn't be allowed to destroy the economy again.

Next time, we may not have a cool hands Barack to deal with such a calamity. After all, we could have ended up with a John McCain and Sarah Palin Administration.

In which case, many of us would have been lined up before soup kitchens by now.